At Some Disputed Barricade_ A Novel - Anne Perry [87]
“I know.” Hook looked down at the paper again. “I’ll try appealing to London, but I don’t know what good it’ll do.”
It was dismissal. Joseph stood, excused himself from the claustrophobic safety of the mud and earth, and the few familiar objects of Hook’s personal life, and went out into the faint, misty sunlight. He felt acutely guilty. At some point there must have been a time when he could have acted differently, hidden something, even lied outright so it would never have reached this stage.
He walked slowly along the track, his boots squelching in the thick mud. At this slightly higher level it was shallower, the water puddling rather than running along. Out in the craters of no-man’s-land either it would be steaming a little in the August heat, or there would be low-lying mustard gas again. It wasn’t always easy to tell.
If Mason had not seen Northrup’s body and known he had been shot by a British gun, there would have been no need for anyone to be aware that it wasn’t just another casualty. God knew there were enough of them!
He stepped and banged into a piece of broken riveting where the earth wall had collapsed.
It was Mason again. This was playing straight into the Peacemaker’s hands. Was he behind it? Or was Joseph just indulging his delusions? The last letter from Matthew had said he was chasing down the old enemy at last. There was no other way to interpret that. Now it looked as if thanks to a catalogue of stupid mistakes, the Peacemaker was going to win after all. Britain would be in mutiny and defeat, with the best part of a million men dead, countless more wounded in body and crushed in mind and spirit. It was a defeat he could not even have imagined when they first left for France three years ago, thinking they would be home for Christmas. It had been all heroism and honor then, dreams of glory. Now there was only despair.
It would have been better to have turned a blind eye to Northrup’s murder, better even to have shot the man himself, than have it come to this. What was the point at which he had made the wrong judgment? Perhaps that was the secret of life, knowing when was the precise moment at which you decide to do something irrevocable, rather than being a coward, a man always thinking, poised on the edge of decision, and never making it.
Joseph went to bed in his own dugout a little after midnight and slept more deeply than he had expected. However, just before dawn he woke with a jolt, his heart pounding, the sweat pouring off his body. Everything was familiar—the books, the picture of Dante, his chair and desk—but there was rifle fire close at hand and men’s voices, high-pitched, shouting.
He rolled off the bunk and stood up, his body shaking. There were more shouts, and bursts of fire rather than controlled aiming.
There was a noise immediately outside on the steps, then the sacking curtain was yanked aside and a figure blocked out the shred of light.
Joseph half expected to see the spike-crested helmet of a German officer. He made a supreme effort to calm himself and look, and realized it was a British Tommy, but bareheaded.
“Capt’n Reavley! You there, sir?”
“Yes, I am.” Joseph swallowed. “What is it, Tiddly Wop?”
“They’re gone, Captain. All of ’em, ’cepting Captain Cavan. Gawd knows how it happened, but they’re gone!” Andrews replied.
Joseph struggled to grasp what the words meant. It could not possibly be true. “Gone?” he repeated foolishly. “You mean they’ve been taken somewhere else? They’re going to have the court-martial at another regiment?”
“Oi don’t mean been took, sir. Oi mean gone themselves! Nobody knows where they are. They escaped. Could ’ave gone anywhere.”
Now Joseph was cold, as if his hands and feet hardly belonged to him. “They couldn’t have got out of the farmhouse. What happened to the guard? How could they get out?”
“Guards are all tied up like turkeys for dinner, but not a hair of their head broke.”
“You said Captain Cavan is still there?” Joseph